City Announces Facade Improvement Grants

The City of East Ridge announces a new local Community Development program for existing East Ridge businesses interested in projects to improve their business.

Beginning Monday, May 18, businesses that are located along the Central Business Corridor, on or adjacent to Ringgold Road, can apply for grant funds. If approved, funds may be used to update storefronts, signage and parking areas, which are among the potential projects available to eligible applicants if approved for a grant project.

The City’s objective in providing grant funds to eligible East Ridge businesses is to improve the look and feel for citizens, businesses, and visitors as well as to attract shoppers to East Ridge businesses by improving the city’s Central Business Corridor.

City-approved grant projects are reimbursable for half of the project cost up to $10,000 from the City, or a $20,000 total project cost, a dollar for dollar match. Projects may be completed in phases.

Applications will be available at City Hall or on the City’s website at http://www.eastridgetn.org/

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.